


The White Wolf's Soft Heart

by DictionaryWrites



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Genre: Bickering, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Complicated Relationships, Difficult Decisions, Domestic, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Has Feelings, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Jaskier | Dandelion Loves Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, M/M, POV Jaskier | Dandelion, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:55:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22309951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: Travelling through Velen, Geralt and Jaskier answer a notice.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 104
Kudos: 958





	The White Wolf's Soft Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Fusion of TV and game canon, playing with the Wild At Heart in-game quest.

The air in Velen is grey and miserable, and Jaskier coughs from beneath his thick cloak, borrowed from Geralt’s pack, and presses his face against the back of Roach’s neck, huddling down in the saddle. If the cold bothers the witcher, walking at an easy pace with his hand loosely tangled in Roach’s reins, he doesn’t show it – Geralt neither shivers nor winces when a freezing breeze comes their way, and merely keeps moving, his yellow eyes studying the road ahead.

Roach’s hooves make wet sounds on the sodden path. It was cold enough earlier, when there were still hours of daylight left, but soon enough, they’ll lose what light they have, and it’ll be _freezing_. Jaskier’s teeth chatter.

“_Must_ we?” Jaskier asks, for the sixth time. “We should be going _north_, Geralt, to Novigrad – you could just drop me off and—”

“I told you,” Geralt says, his voice low and firm and unshakable, “that we answer notices as we see them. We get to Novigrad when we get there. That’s what you agreed to, Jaskier, when I let you join me.”

Jaskier presses his cheek to Roach’s mane. “You agree with me, don’t you, darling? It’s too cold, and too wet!” Roach huffs, and Jaskier lets out a triumphant, “Ha!” of noise. Geralt does not laugh, but merely gives Jaskier an ironic twitch of one white eyebrow, making Jaskier smile despite himself as they make their way onward.

It’s barely a village.

More of a _hamlet_, really – there’s not even a _tavern_, and Jaskier can’t quite school his expression into a charming smile as Geralt stops to speak to an old woman, one who looks with a mix of disgust and suspicion at Geralt and Jaskier both.

He can’t quite understand it, the horror that people look to Geralt with, the unkindness – oh, he knows, once he starts singing a few songs, people tend to think more positively about him, maybe put a bit more money his way, but…

They’re coming from Crow’s Perch. Geralt had been talking the whole _week_, before they came to Crow’s Perch, how people never wanted to pay their full share, how people never wanted to pay the witcher for his work, and yet the soft-hearted old bastard had taken one look at the child who’d been orphaned by the beast he was petitioned to kill, and had insisted the money be kept for the boy.

He doesn’t want to talk about it. Jaskier wonders how often he does that – he’s soft for children, is the White Wolf, no matter that he says he isn’t.

Shame it wouldn’t make a catchy tune, really.

The White Wolf’s Soft Heart—

Well, it’s not the _worst_ title in the world.

“Which house is his?” Geralt is saying, and the old woman points. “Thank you. Farewell.”

“I don’t know why you’re so polite to them,” Jaskier mutters as Geralt leads Roach further along the path, to the other side of the village. “They don’t bother with you.”

Geralt shrugs his shoulders, bringing Roach to a trough so that she can drink, and then he offers his hand for Jaskier to steady himself as he gets down, like he would with a woman. Jaskier doesn’t comment on it, although he feels his cheeks turn slightly pink at the way villagers are _watching_ them, and he wraps Geralt’s cloak more solidly around his shoulders, the grey fur as warm as it is ugly.

“Niellen?” Geralt asks, stepping forward as Jaskier ties Roach against the fence, stroking her side. “You put up a notice in Crow’s Perch.”

“That’s right,” says the fellow at the worktable, flensing a deer skin, and he gestures for Geralt to take the stool across from him, which Geralt does. He sits with his back straight, his hands loosely held in his lap, and Jaskier takes a few steps forward, sinking into the stool beside him. It’s slightly damp under his arse – why is everything so thrice-damned _wet_? – and he fidgets with the cloak until Geralt smacks him hard in the arm.

“_Ow!”_ Jaskier groans, but Geralt gives him a furious look, and Jaskier is quiet and still, pulling some of the cloak underneath him so he isn’t sitting directly on the old stump.

“T’is my wife, Hanna,” the man says. He looks pale, his eyes red-rimmed and darkly shadowed from lack of sleep, and his hand is quivering as he holds his knife over the deer hide spread on the table, so he sets it aside on the pink surface, putting his hands together instead. There are scars over his hands and his arms – the ones Jaskier supposes you’d expect from a hunter, because there are teeth marks there. He’d be handsome, Jaskier thinks, were he not plainly so shaken, and in such grief – there’s a rugged look about him, a wolfish energy to his features, a bit like Geralt has. From one hunter to another, Jaskier supposes, some things are the same.

“She’s gone missing,” he says, his voice low, “and I’m afeared, I am, that something’s happened to her. Didn’t expect no witcher to answer my notice, though.”

“I expect payment when the job is done,” Geralt says.

“I know,” Niellen says, nodding. “I’ll give you payment, sir, I swear it. I just— I want my wife back, sir, or even just to know what it is has happened to her, that…”

“Is it possible that she’s run away for some reason?” Geralt asks, his head tilting. The question is blunt, his voice gravelly, but it isn’t actually accusatory, isn’t actually angry. He’s got a way of delivering his questions in the calmest way, and Jaskier’s always in awe of it. “Perhaps she’s been arguing with someone else in the village, or there’s someone she’s gone looking for…?”

“She’s not the type to argue,” Niellen says, shaking his head. “Everyone loves our Hanna, really, they do. She’s quiet, thoughtful, and she looks after all the children in the village. It’s a hard life out here, witcher, and everyone must work to survive, but she was always smiling, always happy. I don’t know nobody who’d ever wish her harm, not even the man with the blackest heart, and as for looking for someone, she wouldn’t go nowhere without telling any of us.

“It’s right treacherous here – there’s a great pack of wolves in the woods there yonder, bolder each year they are, and past the pellar’s house as you passed, there’s all manner of monsters along the riverside. This is no place for a woman to be travelling alone, and she wouldn’t!”

“She would have told one of us,” confirms a woman in a broad-rimmed hat, coming closer. She looks like she hasn’t slept much either, a sickly pallor over her face, which she barely hides with a broad-rimmed hat. She’s a pretty enough woman, young, with dark brown eyes, her hair a mousy colour. “My sister would never go wandering with no one with her, she was too clever for that. Everyone in the village knows her.”

“You and your sister, you were born here, in Blackbough?” Geralt asks, and the woman shakes her head.

“Margit and Hanna came with me here to Blackbough, that we could start build a home for ourselves here. Them two’re from White Orchard, me, I’m from Gors Velen.”

“And you chose to settle in a village prowled by wild wolves?”

“There’s a reason for them wolves, witcher,” Niellen says simply, shrugging his shoulders. “For every wolf in that wild pack, there’s a dozen, two dozen, roaming deer. And besides, I can cull the wolves back myself, make the village safer for everyone.”

Geralt smiles at that. It’s a subtle thing, a very slight upturn of his lip at one edge, but he bows his head in acknowledgement.

“I’ll find your wife for you,” he says quietly. “But there’s only an hour left to the day’s light, and even a witcher needs rest. Is there anywhere in the village where we can lodge for the night?”

“Ask Anita, the butcher’s wife,” Niellen says. “She knew Hanna well, she’ll probably let you have a pallet for the night.”

“That’s all we need,” Geralt says, standing. “Anyone else know her well?”

“Georg, the blacksmith,” Niellen says. “She used to look after his children.”

“None of your own?” Jaskier asks, and Geralt glances at him, but again there’s that ghost of an almost-smile, slight approval, all but non-existent on his face if you didn’t know what you were looking for.

“We’ve been trying,” Niellen says lowly, his eyes downcast. “Thought to have our first when the winter thawed to summer, give the tyke time to grow its lungs before the damp came in again.”

“Good night,” Geralt says quietly.

The sister, Margit, looks like she wants to say something, but she doesn’t, letting Jaskier and Geralt move away, and Jaskier falls into step with Geralt, although it’s difficult, with how long his legs are, and how fast are his strides.

“So, wolves ate her, then,” Jaskier says.

“Maybe,” Geralt says.

“But he just said there’s loads of them, and that they’re bold. Why wouldn’t they kill a woman?”

“There are a lot of deer out there, he said,” Geralt says quietly. “Well-fed wolves probably wouldn’t bother with a human – they make too much noise, look too different, and especially if she wasn’t actually out in the woods, they’d have to stray too far to get at her. There’d be evidence at the edge of the woods, at least, the likes of which that he’d have picked up while hunting.”

“Then it’s a monster? What do you think? Oh, perhaps a spriggan has her under its spell, or a leshen—”

“Excuse me,” Geralt says, leaning on the fence outside the butcher’s house, and the woman there, with a red braid and a loose blouse – _Gods_, how are her nipples not turning to icicles? – turns to look at them, her eyes hard. “Are you Anita?”

“Aye,” she says. “What’s it to you, white one?”

“I’m in Blackbough answering Niellen’s notice for someone to find his wife. We’ve been walking all day, and he said we might ask you for somewhere to stay the night, before I search for Hanna in the dawnlight.”

Anita’s mouth twists, and she stares at them both.

“We can pay in coin,” Geralt says mildly. “I’d offer you balms, tinctures, but with the pellar so close—”

“No one likes to go to him for some things,” she says, her expression taking on something slightly furtive. “The man fucks his goat.”

“Not really of my business,” Geralt says, and Jaskier has to hide his laugh as he turns his head away.

“You make—” She starts, and then looks hard at Jaskier. She lowers her voice, coughing slightly, and then she asks, still in that grave, serious voice, “You make tinctures as can stop a girl falling pregnant?”

“Of course,” Geralt says, unflinching. “Your pellar can’t manage it?”

“The man’s liable to muck it up just so’s a girl falls pregnant according to his augurs. I couldn’t give a shit about what the augurs say – I can’t afford to feed no more mouths than I have. Our Hanna looked after Gretel, our wee lass, but I couldn’t have more than her.”

“But there are so many deer in the woods,” Jaskier says. “Isn’t your husband a butcher?”

“Ha!” the woman says, scornful, her hands going to her hips. “Maybe when we were in Novigrad, but there’s no livestock here, not for a butcher to make his trade. We’re saving to buy chickens, but the coin for cows or even goats, let alone the land…” She shakes her head, and spits on the ground. Jaskier makes a face. “And Niellen, he can only bring back so much as he can carry – a deer a week, not much more. Very well, witcher. You make me a potion, and pass my hand with a few coins, and I’ll set you two on a pallet by our fire.”

“Do you mind if we ask you a few questions about Hanna?” Jaskier asks, and Anita sets her jaw, frowning, but then nods her head, gesturing for them to follow into the house.

It’s unspeakably warm, and Jaskier sighs in relief, slumping under the cloak. Geralt tugs it from his shoulders, and Jaskier shivers, shaking out his limbs and squeezing his hands into loose fists before shaking them out again.

“Is it always this cold?”

“In Velen?” Anita asks, and laughs bitterly. “Aye. But my man had gambling debts in Novigrad, lost us our house, so here we are.” Jaskier rushes to help her as she begins to set out a few skins on a new pallet, and she looks at him approvingly, although not without a disapproving glance at his red tunic. “If ye have questions, ask them.”

“When did you last see Hanna?” Geralt asks.

“A week back,” Anita answers, moving across the room to pull out some straw to settle over the pallet, letting Jaskier kneel with her to put it out. He _hates_ peasants’ pallets – there’s a reason he prefers the real mattresses of the city, where pillows are made of feather instead of your companion’s arm, and where you’re not liable to be stabbed through the side by a stray twig of too-dry hay, but what is to be done? Even the pellar probably doesn’t have a real bed, and that one no doubt smells of goat. “She was looking after Gretel and the blacksmith’s children, Kathy and Hant, brought Gretel to my door before bringing Kathy and Hant home.”

“What did she do with the children, to keep them occupied?” Jaskier asks, smoothing out a bear skin.

“She’d teach ‘em things,” Anita says. “In the summer last, t’was frogspawn and fishing – there’s scarce anything in that river there, but she’d teach them with Niellen watching over, you know, that nothing could creep up on ‘em. As the winter’s been getting colder, she’s been keeping ‘em inside a bit, to teach them some letters. Gretel only has four summers, and Kathy and Hant have only seven and eight – they just get underfoot here, or in the forge, and Hanna was always more’n happy to keep them occupied. Told me it made her happy, you see, while she was waiting to have one of her own.”

She sits on the edge of the pallet, her hands loosely set on her knees, her expression faraway, quietly sad.

“Is it possible,” Geralt asks, “that she left the village to find another husband? One who could give her what she wanted?”

“Hanna?” Anita asks, leaning back slightly, and slowly, she shakes her head. “No, no, I don’t think so. Only thing she loved more’n children was that Niellen. When they first came to Velen, it was… They’d finish each other’s sentences, dance together as if there was music playing in the middle of the day. Only thing missing was…”

She looks ashamed, for a moment, and then she says, “Even suggested once, casually like, said I’d not mind if she had a go at Damen, you know, if she had a tumble with him at the winter’s festival, you know – if she were drunk, and Niellen hates parties, always goes off and does something else to avoid it, so he’d never know. I just phrased it as a joke, like, but she were proper upset, said she couldn’t even think of another man like she does Niellen. They were made for each other.”

“And what about Margit?” Jaskier asks, catching hold of the thread that doesn’t quite fit the story. “Pretty woman like her, come all the way to Blackbough from White Orchard, to be third wheel to someone else’s marriage?”

“Oh, no, Margit’s been looking for a husband,” Anita murmurs. “She’ll be travelling come summer to meet a few fellas the Ealdorman in Midcopse has picked out for her.”

“Right,” Geralt says, nodding his head.

The door comes open, and Geralt steps back as a little girl runs into the room, laughing loudly as a big, hulking man chases after her, laughing himself. When he sees Geralt and Jaskier, his expression sours, and he looks between the both of them.

“Said a witcher’d come through with his wife,” the butcher growls. “Thought she’d be prettier.”

“My eyes are bluer than _yours_ are,” Jaskier says scornfully, and the butcher scowls, taking a step toward him, but as Jaskier stumbles back off the pallet, Geralt’s hand comes out, the back of his palm spreading over his chest to keep him back. Anita’s lip twitches into a nasty grin, and she leans to catch Gretel under her arms, lifting her up against her chest.

“Witchers don’t marry,” Geralt says. “But my friend here is the famed bard, Julian Alfred Pankatz – Jaskier. He was thinking about performing for your village tonight, to thank you for your hospitality, but—”

“No, no,” the butcher says quickly. “The children’d like that. It’d be good for them to have some new songs to sing as the winter comes in.”

There’s a soft look in the butcher’s eyes, and Jaskier watches Anita turn away, pressing kisses to Gretel’s nose and cheeks as she brings her to come sit in the chair beside the fire, and when Jaskier meets Geralt’s eyes, he sees the same understanding in his expression. Jaskier supposes it’s a big shame, when a husband and wife are mismatched, on something like children, but to lie about it…?

He lies, of course.

He doesn’t think he’d lie about something like this. Not to his _wife_.

“I’ll get my lute,” Jaskier says, standing to his feet.

“I’ll gather some herbs for that balm I promised you,” Geralt murmurs.

“Balm?” the butcher demands, suspicious, but Anita is already leaning forward in the chair

“For fertility, Damen,” she says, smiling sweetly, no sign of deception in her eyes.

“Ha,” the butcher murmurs, leaning to cup her cheek and kiss her on the mouth, and when Jaskier shoots Geralt a look, Geralt just shrugs his shoulders.

\--

It is later, after Jaskier has played for all the villagers interested, crammed into the blacksmith’s hut – the biggest of the shacks that pass for houses in Blackbough – that Margit comes up to him while he’s walking back to the butcher’s home.

“Where’s the witcher?” she demands as Jaskier puts his lute back in its case, fastening it back up. It’s pitch dark now, the light coming from the lanterns only scantly lighting the path. In the distance, he can hear wolves howling in the woods.

“Gathering herbs,” Jaskier says. “He makes all manners of oil and potion to do his work.”

“Right,” Margit murmurs. She looks anxious and tired, her hands twitching at her sides, her mouth twisted into a thin line as she walks alongside him. “Look, it’s… Hanna is dead. It’s been six days since she disappeared, and there in’t no one who goes in them woods but Niellen who comes out again. She’s surely dead.”

“This is your sister we’re talking about,” Jaskier says. “You don’t want to know what happened to her?”

“I _know_ what happened to her,” Margit groans, running her hands through her hair, nudging her hat slightly out of place. “She’s _dead_. It don’t matter what did it, whether it was drowners or wolves or bloody elves – she’s gone, and all your witcher’s doing is stirring it up. Can’t you just let us in peace?”

“Niellen called us here.” Jaskier shakes his head even as he says it. “We haven’t just shown up for no reason.”

“He put up them notices when there were still hope, Master Jaskier – it’s been near a _week_. She ain’t coming back. Niellen and I both need to _grieve_. Look, I’ll even give you the reward Niellen promised you, if you’ll just tell him she’s dead.”

There are tears in her eyes.

“You seem really certain,” Jaskier says. “Did you— Did you see something, or…?”

“I can feel it in my heart,” Margit retorts. She looks awful. Looks wracked with pain and heartache, she really does. “She’s _dead_, sir, and I just— I just want for us to be able to accept that, and move on.”

\--

“No,” Geralt says, and Jaskier lies on his side under the blanket, his head resting on Geralt’s bundled-up cloak, lining outward, as he watches Geralt work. He’d lit a candle to see by – although Jaskier knows he doesn’t actually need it, with those cat’s eyes of his – and is now grinding up flower petals into a paste, warming it over a candle. “I don’t do that.”

“She was _sobbing_,” Jaskier mumbles. “She seemed genuinely heartbroken, Geralt. Are you that certain this woman is alive?”

“Nope,” Geralt says. “She’s almost certainly dead.”

Jaskier says, “Such sensitivity and tact, as always,” and Geralt huffs lowly, adding a sweet-smelling something to the paste. It’s a nice perfume, and Jaskier inhales, looking at the lilac smoke that comes up in little wafts from the mortar.

“But it will bring the husband closure to know how she died,” Geralt says. “And assuming it was some kind of beast that killed her, I can’t just leave it.”

“And if Margit is the beast? If she murdered her sister?”

Geralt shrugs. “Not really my business.” 

“How is that not your business?”

“I’m a witcher,” Geralt says. “Not a lawman.”

Jaskier groans, but when one of the floorboards creaks, he sits up, and sees little Gretel rubbing sleepily at her eye, swaying on her feet, and she makes her way over to the pallet, dropping heavily down on the edge of the pallet, her little fingers stroking over the bear fur.

“You got white hair? Why for?” asks the little girl, with a curious intensity.

“Because I’m old,” Geralt says.

“Are not.”

“Am too.”

“Are _not_.”

“Older’n you, aren’t I?”

“But you’re not _old_.”

“Okay, you caught me,” Geralt says, and then leans in close, his fingers on his lips. Gretel copies him, her little eyes blown wide, her lips parted. “I paint it.”

She gasps. “Wow…”

Geralt smiles, pouring his balm into a cannister and setting it aside, and then he catches the girl under her arms, carrying her across the room and back to the doorway to the other room, nudging her on the back so that she stumbles back to bed. He sets his boots aside before he lies down on the pallet, and immediately, Jaskier crams his body closer to Geralt’s.

“You _leech_,” Geralt growls, but he doesn’t actually shove Jaskier away as Jaskier presses his cheek against his chest, and instead lifts his arm so that Jaskier can get closer, wrapping on arm tightly around Geralt’s belly.

“You’re such a liar,” Jaskier says.

“Am I?”

“You always say you don’t like children.”

“Said I didn’t _want_ children,” Geralt says. “I like children better than I do most folk. They’re simpler. Not so cruel.”

“Kids can be cruel.”

“Not until they’re taught.”

Jaskier considers that for a moment, listening to the too-slow, inhuman heartbeat in Geralt’s chest, feeling the heat of him.

“Did it bother you when they called me your wife?”

“Go to sleep, Jaskier,” Geralt says, and Jaskier closes his eyes.

\--

“Wow! Can I touch your sword?” asks Kathy as they come up to the smith’s yard, and Geralt slowly shakes his head, but his smile is subtly indulgent.

“It’s sharp,” Geralt says. “Better not.”

“You must be the witcher Jaskier told us about,” says Adan, the blacksmith, and Jaskier smiles as Hant, the young lad, brings out some tea for Jaskier and Geralt both, pushing the mugs into their hands. Jaskier can see the surprise in Geralt’s face, but he still smiles slightly, nodding to the boy and bringing the tea up to his mouth.

He sniffs at it, of course, before he drinks any. Even an eight-year-old couldn’t be trusted not to poison him without evidence, first – although, it says a lot for Geralt that he’s subtle about it.

“Had some questions for you, Hant, and for Kathy,” Geralt said.

“About our Auntie Hanna?” Hant asks solemnly, and Geralt nods.

“You remember the last day you saw her?”

“She brought us home before sundown,” Hant says. “She was teaching us our letters.”

“She seem upset?”

“Nuh uh,” Hant says. “She was real happy, even more’n usual, and she was all bouncy.”

“And she went straight home, after?” Geralt asks.

It’s Kathy that shakes her head, and says, “No,” in a soft, tiny voice.

“No?” Geralt asks, and he crouches down, so that he’s looking up at her instead of looming over her. It almost lets him meet the little girl’s gaze, which is firmly levelled at the dirt.

“Margit says I was making it up,” Kathy says. “But I weren’t, I swear.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t make something up like that,” Geralt says softly. “Bet Auntie Hanna taught you not to lie, hm?”

“Mmm,” Kathy nods.

“So, what was it you saw, Kathy?”

“Auntie Hanna went into the woods,” she says. “From that field yonder, and she was following after a woman.”

“You know what woman?”

“No,” Kathy says, shaking her head. “Couldn’t see her, what with the moon behind her, like.”

“Okay,” Geralt murmurs. “Well, thanks anyway, Kathy. This was all really helpful. Farewell.”

He sets his tea aside, stepping away from the blacksmith’s hut, and Jaskier steps after him.

“So?” Jaskier asks. “So Margit killed her, right?”

“Don’t know,” Geralt says. “Gonna find out.”

“Can I come?”

Geralt turns his head to look at Jaskier, his eyebrows raising. “You want to come? To find the week old corpse of this woman, and then the monster that made it?”

“I’m _curious_,” Jaskier says.

“Curious enough to die?”

“You wouldn’t let me die.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Geralt says, and pats his cheek. “Go look after the kids.”

Jaskier groans, and he watches Geralt walk up the hill before he turns back and trudges back to the smithy.

\--

It’s pouring rain when Geralt comes back into town, stinking of blood and soaked with the rainwater, and he doesn’t even wait for Jaskier when he comes to the smithy’s door. He just comes over, knocks so hard on the door it rattles in its place, and when Jaskier opens it he’s already moving back toward Niellen’s house, a white shadow in the dark night.

When he comes inside, Geralt has already stripped off all of his clothes, and some water is steaming over the hearth. He brings the hot-watered cloth over his skin, scrubbing off the clinging blood on his skin.

He has a foul expression on his face.

“I brought some pastries that Anita made,” Jaskier says. “She was teaching Kathy and Hant how. Taught me, too. Saved you some, if you’re hungry.”

“I’m not,” Geralt says, and he keeps on scrubbing the blood from his arms, his chest. Jaskier sits down on one of the chairs, pulling it closer to the fire, and he hesitates, and then gets to his feet, pushing Geralt to sit in the chair instead.

It says a lot about the state Geralt’s in that he lets Jaskier push him into place, and take up the washcloth instead. He hisses at how hot it is, but he scrubs at Geralt’s chest anyway, and then moves onto the scummed-up back of his neck, where he hasn’t been reaching.

“I’m going to have to wash your hair,” he says.

Geralt doesn’t say anything, which Jaskier takes as assent, and he takes the kettle off the fire, pouring a little of the steaming water into Geralt’s hair before pouring over some shampoo, scrubbing at his scalp.

“You’re never this upset when it’s just monsters, you know,” Jaskier says. “It’s only people that can upset you like this.”

“People are worse than monsters,” Geralt says, and Jaskier nods his head, bringing his fingers through Geralt’s hair and digging out the worst of the congealed blood. Jaskier was squeamish, once upon a time, but these days he’s much less so – when it’s on Geralt, at least. He supposes the icky factor of blood spatter is balanced out by the delicious aspect of Geralt’s muscles.

“Tell me what happened,” Jaskier says, and Geralt is quiet.

“I want one of those pastries,” he says.

“Let’s dry your hair off, first,” Jaskier says, and keeps scrubbing at it.

\--

Turns out Niellen and Hanna actually had a _bed_.

Wooden frame, a straw mattress, and even cloth pillows – no, not with feathers, but they’re certainly softer than hard straw. Jaskier lies on his side beside Geralt, who’s supine with his head on the pillows, letting Jaskier draw little patterns on his chest.

“I tracked Hanna up into the woods,” Geralt says lowly. “Tracked her boot prints, and then found a piece of her skirt torn on some gorse. Looked like she’d been running, and she couldn’t outrun what was coming for her. She’d been ripped apart, dismembered. Animal with long claws, a heavy body.”

“A wolf?”

“There were wolves,” Geralt says. “They’d picked at what was left of the body. Followed the bloodstains to an old shack, which was over a cave. Not much in the shack – a few old hides, a bed, some extra hunting equipment. But the cave underneath was blocked off, had some heavy chains over the doors.”

“Someone had locked something in?” Jaskier asks.

“Chains were on the inside,” Geralt says, and Jaskier sits up, staring down at him. “Werewolf. The cave had been… carefully thought out. There was a bed of straw in one corner, and wolfsbane had been planted around all the edges, especially around the cave mouth, before the doors. Some puffball mushrooms, too – whoever’d made it had obviously gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that they’d be weakened, while they were stuck in the cave.”

“So— the werewolf was Niellen?”

“Yes,” Geralt says. “When night fell, Niellen came into his den – he was shocked to find me waiting for him, but the transformation was already taking hold. We fought… He fell down on the floor, wounded. Fell down on his back, but before I could do anything, Margit came in from the cave entrance.

“Screamed at me not to kill him. Wailed that it wasn’t his fault. Then… out came the whole story. Margit _loooved_ Niellen. He’d chosen her sister over her. Margit thought that if she showed her sister what Niellen was, if she saw what he was, that she’d leave him for Margit to take instead.”

“Was that why she couldn’t get pregnant?” Jaskier asks, his hands resting either side of Geralt’s chest, and Geralt shrugs his shoulders.

“Lycanthropy is passed onto children. It’s probable that he took something to render himself sterile, so that he wouldn’t pass it on. I found some notes in the shack – he’d tried a whole series of folk remedies for the lycanthropy, so he definitely knew that. Anyway, he was… He wanted to kill her.”

“But you stopped him?”

Geralt is silent, his jaw set.

“Geralt?”

“He was the hunter for the whole village,” Geralt says. “He feeds these people, he dotes on their children. He protects everyone in their bounds – community-focused, thoughtful, went to every conceivable solution he could think of to make sure his curse didn’t affect anybody else. He was good for this village. I said it wasn’t my business, that it was between them.”

Geralt’s eyes are focused on some point in the middle distance, and the self-loathing comes off him in waves.

“You let him kill her,” Jaskier says quietly. “But, Geralt, that’s not so— It’s not as though she didn’t have it coming. She wasn’t just putting Hanna at risk when she let him free – she was putting the whole village at risk, and just so she could have a husband who was already spoken for? Her _sister’s_ husband?”

“I left them to it,” Geralt says. “And he came after me, then.”

“To kill you?”

“He wanted me to kill him,” Geralt says. “Told him to make himself a noose like the next man instead, and he wouldn’t. He begged me to kill him, said he couldn’t stand the idea of ever hurting someone else again. Said he woke up the night Hanna disappeared tasting blood in his mouth, and convinced himself so completely it was from a deer.” He sighs, dragging his fingers over his mouth, and then mutters, “Hanna dead, Niellen dead, Margit dead. No reason for it.”

“It goes like that, sometimes,” Jaskier says, and Geralt slides his hands to Jaskier’s waist, squeezing slightly. “It’s not your fault.”

“They’re going to think you murdered them,” Jaskier says.

“No,” Geralt says, shaking his head. “Went to the pellar, and to the butcher’s wife. Brought them the werewolf’s head, showed Anita the old shack, and the hunting stuff there. They’ll bury Hanna and Margit tomorrow.”

“They’re paying you?”

“Three hundred crowns,” Geralt says.

“So start to Novigrad tomorrow,” Jaskier says, stroking his hands over Geralt’s chest.

“No,” Geralt says.

“No?”

“Three more days.”

“Why?”

“Gonna teach the butcher’s wife to use a bow and arrow, and show her the basics of tracking deer and wolves, how to cull the latter. Least I can do.”

“Aw,” Jaskier murmurs, leaning in closer. “The White Wolf’s soft heart…”

Geralt meets his gaze, and he just looks so… _tired_. Jaskier sort of aches with it.

“You know how you usually cheer up after a long day by going into a brothel and fucking some poor girl until she can’t walk straight?”

“You already can’t walk straight,” Geralt says. “The phrase “duck-footed” springs to mind.”

“_Shut up_,” Jaskier says, even as he comes to straddle Geralt’s waist, but Geralt just turns them over, pinning Jaskier underneath his weight and falling on top of him, burying his face against his neck.

“Just want to sleep,” Geralt murmurs, and Jaskier curls his fingers in Geralt’s hair, pressing his mouth loosely against the side of his temple.

“Alright,” Jaskier murmurs, wrapping his legs loosely around Geralt’s waist and dragging the blanket on top of them. “Alright.”

Geralt sleeps soundly, Jaskier’s fingers tangled in his hair, and on a bed _this_ close to a real one—

It’s almost, almost perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> For the time being, I'm no longer writing fanfic: I publish original works now. 
> 
> My debut novel, Heart of Stone, is a slice-of-life romance between a vampire and his personal secretary, and I hope it's the first of many. 
> 
> You can check out more about my published work [here](https://johannesevans.tumblr.com/post/629449536272826368/landing-page). I am also on Twitter. 
> 
> Thanks so much for your support and your wonderful feedback on my fanfic! It's been essential in pushing myself to move toward original work.


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